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It's a major feather in the cap of the club as it continues the ongoing application process for Major League Soccer expansion. FC Cincinnati submitted its application for MLS expansion at league headquarters in Manhattan last Tuesday.

“We are so appreciative to our fans who have invested and are joining us for FC Cincinnati’s second year,” team President and General Manager Jeff Berding said in the Tuesday news release. “We promise that you won’t be disappointed. We are excited about the team that is taking the field this year and the front office is working constantly to improve your FCC experience. We want to continue to grow this movement that we started together last year.”

And now, FC Cincinnati will have at least 10,000 fans at every home match this year – and that's before single-game ticket sales. That puts the club in a strong position to compete with its own attendance records from 2016.

The club drew a United Soccer League record 259,437 fans over 15 league matches (333,353 over 18 matches including U.S. Open Cup, the Crystal Palace friendly match and the USL playoffs) in 2016.

FC Cincinnati isn't far at all from being within striking distance of its own records.

Berding has targeted 10,000 season tickets for a while. The number was a kind of indicator of stability for his franchise, Berding said in interviews.

In reaching 10,000 season tickets, FC Cincinnati showed once again it can execute and deliver on long-term, "stretch" goals.

You can bet there will be more long-term goals to meet if the team progresses in the MLS expansion process.

And long term, should FC Cincinnati earn a bid to MLS, the base of 10,000 season ticket holders would put the club in a strong position to eventually compete with some of the league's leaders in terms of total season ticket holders.

While teams like Seattle Sounders FC and Atlanta United FC (27,000 season ticket holders confirmed in January) seem likely to be the pace setters for years to come, Orlando City SC (capped season tickets at 18,000 and sold-out) offers an example of a highly-successful franchise that FC Cincinnati could conceivably compete with right away in terms of ticketing.

That's a long way off, of course.

The point is that 10,000 season ticket holders speaks volumes of where FC Cincinnati is, where it started and where it could potentially go from here. This is a big deal for the MLS aspirants.